What is the difference between self-sabotage and fidelity to the work?

Mike has been writing his book for two and a half years. He has burned it down and started over four times. This episode is about what that process actually taught him, and why it could not have happened any other way.

They discuss:

• Why effort, the thing that works in business and athletics, can actually work against you in creative work

• How to tell whether you are avoiding shipping something because you are afraid or because it genuinely is not ready yet

• What Jerry Seinfeld's unglamorous daily writing process reveals about how mastery actually gets built

• Why Mike says he became a writer during the process of writing his book, and what that distinction means

• Whether the creative win and the business win feel the same once you have experienced both

• What it means to treat something as a craft rather than just a pursuit, and why that difference shows up in the work

If you have a creative project living somewhere in the back of your life that you have not started or have not been able to finish, this episode will make you want to open the document tonight. The product, it turns out, might be the least important thing you get out of it.

Connect with Kevin and Mike on X for more from The Inner Circle:

Kevin Dahlstrom: https://x.com/Camp4

Mike Brown: https://x.com/mbrown_co